June 2003 - Creative Commons blog

The Phoenix Trap

matt, June 26th, 2003

This week’s featured content is Philadelphia-area rock band The Phoenix Trap. All their songs at MP3.com are available under a Creative Commons license (which also has streaming versions). Fans can purchase a CD of their full set of songs as well. “Not Me” and “You’re on Fire” were definitely my favorites.

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Metadata embedding and verfication plan for MP3 & other formats

glenn, June 25th, 2003

A big part of the OYEZ Supreme Court audio announcement today is our new strategy for helping people associate license information with MP3s. (We’ll soon move on to other file formats.)

Right now we’re just showing people how to associate verifiable license links with files. But we want to encourage the developer community and various file-sharing and media player companies to build tools that take advantage of the embedded links to make our licenses useful in the P2P and other non-web contexts.

More info:

(1) Metadata embedding in MP3s and other files

(2) The advantage of the verification link

(3) Verification link: also a traffic engine

(4) Geek-readable version of embedding strategy

Please give us your feedback below, or on the metadata discussion list.

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Supreme Court Audio Classics Enter P2P Zone Thanks to Creative Commons Licenses

glenn, June 25th, 2003

Today, the OYEZ Project announced the first-stage, 100-hour release of MP3s from their 2000+ hours of Supreme Court recordings using Creative Commons’ licenses.

The release also marks the debut of our new metadata tagging and verification strategy, which explains how to attach and verify license information to MP3s (and soon, other files) for distribution on the Net.

Read the Featured Commoner interview of OYEZ director and founder Jerry Goldman, by Creative Commons’ Laura Lynch.

Check out some Supreme Court audio, such as the recent Affirmative Action case.

Read the press release.

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Supreme Court Audio Classics Enter P2P Zone Thanks to Creative Commons Licenses

matt, June 25th, 2003

Creative Commons Also Rolls Out Strategy for Embedding and Verifying License Information in MP3s and Other Files

Palo Alto and Chicago, USA — Creative Commons and the OYEZ Project announced today the first-stage 100-hour release of MP3s from the Project’s 2000+ hours of Supreme Court recordings using Creative Commons’ machine-readable copyright licenses. Creative Commons also announced its new metadata verification policy, designed to ease the legitimate distribution and copying of audio files online by associating copyright information with the files themselves.

The OYEZ Project, http://www.OYEZ.org, is a multimedia archive dedicated to the business of the Supreme Court of the United States and the lives of its Justices. Founded in 1994 at Northwestern University, OYEZ will now host MP3 audio recordings of oral arguments before the Court dating back to the 1950s, including landmark cases such as Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003 (affirmative action) Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003 (affirmative action) Bush v. Gore, 2000 (2000 presidential election) Regents v. Bakke, 1978 (affirmative action) Roe v. Wade, 1971 (abortion and reproductive rights) New York Times v. United States, 1971 (the “Pentagon Papers” case) Miranda v. Arizona, 1966 (“You have the right to remain silent . . .”) Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963 (a defendant’s right to counsel).

Recordings of the oral arguments from these historic controversies are now available for free download from the OYEZ website under a Creative Commons copyright license, which encourages copying and redistribution of the recordings while imposing certain conditions on their use: OYEZ must be attributed, commercial re-use is prohibited, and any modification of the files obligates licensing under the same Creative Commons terms as the original files.

“With the Creative Commons, we have for the first time found a way to license our content to assure use consistent with our objectives. As long as users meet the conditions of the license, they are free to enjoy and share a small treasure of America’s legal and political heritage,” said Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University political science professor and OYEZ project director.

“By releasing hundreds of important Supreme Court recordings under Creative Commons licenses, the OYEZ Project has demonstrated a commitment to filling the commons with high quality educational material for others to use and learn from,” said Lawrence Lessig, chairman of Creative Commons and professor of law at Stanford. “Just as important, the OYEZ Project’s use of machine-readable licenses with its MP3s is a big step toward a world in which law and technology can work together to promote sharing.”

More About Creative Commons’ Metadata Embedding Policy

Creative Commons also announced today their new metadata embedding policy that defines a standard way to embed metadata into files verified by an external webpage.

“The Creative Commons license information embedded into each of the OYEZ Supreme Court files can be verified by an external webpage maintained by the copyright holder,” said Mike Linksvayer, Creative Commons CTO.

“We hope this will become the standard approach to embedding and verifying metadata.”

More information below, and at: http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/embedding.

More about Creative Commons

A nonprofit corporation, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual works — whether owned or public domain. It is sustained by the generous support of The Center for the Public Domain and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Creative Commons is based at Stanford Law School, where it shares staff, space, and inspiration with the school’s Center for Internet and Society.

More information at http://creativecommons.org.

More about OYEZ

Today, The OYEZ Project provides access to more than 2000 hours of Supreme Court audio. All audio in the Court recorded since 1995 is included in the project. Before 1995, the audio collection is selective. OYEZ aims to create a complete and authoritative archive of Supreme Court audio covering the entire span from October 1955 through the most recent release. OYEZ receives support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, FindLaw, Northwestern University, and the law firm of Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw.

For more information http://www.OYEZ.org.

Contact

Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director Creative Commons
1.650.723.7572 (tel)
glenn -AT- creativecommons.org

Jerry Goldman
Professor of Political Science
Director, The OYEZ Project
1.847.475.6671 (tel)
j-goldman -AT- northwestern.edu

Neeru Paharia
Assistant Director Creative Commons
1.650.724.3717 (tel)
neeru -AT- creativecommons.org

Mike Linksvayer
Chief Technical Officer Creative Commons
ml -AT- creativecommons.org

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Adelante con Swartz

glenn, June 24th, 2003

Creative Commons has signed on in support of Aaron Swartz‘s call for “forward motion” on blog protocols. We will be participating in helping define licensing extensions to the new specification.

(I’ve worked with Aaron, our metadata advisor, for over a year now, and this isn’t the first time I’ve followed his lead. You should try it if you haven’t.)

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Help! I'm in a nutshell!

matt, June 23rd, 2003

In a newly posted interview on the Apple site, “O’Reilly in a Nutshell,” Tim O’Reilly discusses how his publishing company came to be, how it follows open source trends, and how it publishes many titles under a Creative Commons Founders’ Copyright license.

We should note that the Founders’ Copyright isn’t just for big publishing houses. Anyone can apply for a license to release their works after 14 (or 28) years.

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OpenContent's David Wiley, Educational License Project Lead

glenn, June 23rd, 2003

David Wiley, Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology at Utah State University and founder of the trailblazing OpenContent, is Project Lead for development of an educational use Creative Commons license, which begins today.

Welcome, Professor Wiley.

Read the first draft.

Review our earlier discussion on the subject.

Join the current discussion.

Read the press release.

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Creative Commons Welcomes David Wiley as Educational Use License Project Lead

matt, June 23rd, 2003

The Silicon Valley Nonprofit Also Takes Up Baton of Wiley’s Trailblazing OpenContent Project

Palo Alto, California, USA — Creative Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to building a layer of reasonable copyright, announced today that OpenContent founder Dr. David Wiley, Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology at Utah State University, will join Creative Commons and officially close the OpenContent Project.

“When I saw the Creative Commons team, and all their expertise, I saw that they ‘got it,'” said Wiley. “I slowly came to the somewhat painful realization that the best thing I could do for the community was to close the OpenContent project and encourage people to adopt the Creative Commons licenses.”

The OpenContent Project launched in 1998, offering the first license designed specifically to support the free and open sharing of content. While working to evangelize the idea of “open content,” Dr. Wiley next worked with members of the open source software community and commercial publishers to develop an open content license that would be acceptable to publishers. Since its release, numerous books have been published under the terms of the resulting Open Publication License, including titles by O’Reilly, Prentice Hall, New Riders, and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Copies of the OpenContent License and Open Publication License will continue to be available from the OpenContent website, http://opencontent.org/, for archival purposes, but newcomers to the site will be encouraged to visit Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/, to utilize the licenses available on their site. Neither of the OpenContent licenses will be developed further in the future.

Creative Commons Executive Director Glenn Otis Brown commented: “It is an honor to welcome a pioneer like Professor Wiley to the Creative Commons team. His efforts have been a major source of inspiration for our own, so it is both appropriate and a little humbling for us to be working alongside him now.”

Wiley joins Creative Commons in the capacity of Project Lead for Educational Licensing. “Because I’m an instructional technologist, and my primary field of research and inquiry is using technology to better support learning, my own http://creativecommons.org Press Release work in open content has always focused on reusable educational media. I couldn’t be happier than I am to participate in this manner,” said Wiley.

Creative Commons will announce new Project Leads for a Developing Nations License shortly, said Brown.

More about Creative Commons

A non-profit corporation, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual works — whether owned or public domain. It is sustained by the generous support of The Center for the Public Domain and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Creative Commons is based at Stanford Law School, where it shares staff, space, and inspiration with the school’s Center for Internet and Society.

For general information, visit http://creativecommons.org.

For more information about the community development model, visit http://creativecommons.org/discuss.

Contact

Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director (Palo Alto)
1.650.723.7572 (tel)
1.415.336.1433 (cell)
glenn -AT- creativecommons.org

Neeru Paharia
Assistant Director (Palo Alto)
1.650.724.3717 (tel)
neeru -AT- creativecommons.org

David Wiley
david.wiley -AT- usu.edu
dw2 -AT- opencontent.org

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The Pentagon Papers were less secure

glenn, June 19th, 2003

“Advanced Marketing Services, a San Diego-based distributor that expects to handle about 2 million [fortcoming Harry] Potter books between Saturday and January 2004, has hired security guards in the United States and added guard dogs for a Canadian distributor it partially owns. . . .

‘I can’t let you touch the book,’ warned Bill Carr, Amazon.com’s director of books, music, videos and DVDs. He gestured toward some of the more than 200,000 books — about 150 tons worth — that will be shipped to West Coast destinations.

Similar operations are under way at Amazon.com’s four other major regional distribution centers in Newcastle, Del.; Coffeyville, Kan.; Campbellsville, Ky.; and Lexington, Ky.

The 896-page books were locked in special rooms when they arrived at the warehouse. They were cordoned off from the rest of building by a pair of security guards, who were not allowed to talk to reporters. Reporters were searched on their way out of the building.”

–From MSNBC (thanks to Creative Commons intern Ben O’Neil).

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Creative Commons on the Hustings

glenn, June 19th, 2003

Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is using a Creative Commons license on his campaign blog.

Some Rights Reserved is a big-tent party. When it comes to IP, we’re the only true party of Jefferson. So who’s next to walk in TJ’s footsteps?

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